There is a word that my spouse’s family uses (from a Disney movie) to describe the morass of color that happens when you mix up all of the paint colors of the rainbow: skillagamink. It’s that unappetizing brownish greyish mud of color that lacks vibrance and clarity with miasmic properties that is off-putting although not necessarily upsetting.

There is synesthesic element of skillagamink that captures the ways which Covid has emptied our lives. It’s getting hard to remember the vibrancy of our everyday life, in which we took for granted eating out, being with friends, participating in ritual and prayer. Instead, the days in which we are physically isolated and socially separated are turning grey. They are turning skillagamink. The choices of our days are limited by our own relationships to risk, tempered by either our own vulnerabilities or the fear of infecting and hurting others we love and cherish.

The colors of days pre-Covid are quickly being forgotten. We ask each other via Zoom or phone, “How are you?” and struggle to respond. The basics for our lives are all there for the family and friends around us. Within each of our homes, there is some semblance of safety. For most of us, there is food. The children get on with the limitations of learning online. There are some money concerns, but we have the ability to eke out some solution.

The skillagamink landscape blunts sadness and fear, especially for us fortunate when most of our family and friends have not yet been touched by sickness or worse. We are all getting on with our jobs and accepting the new normal. Skillagamink makes it hard complain when we have so much that allows us to keep going.

We live in a technological world that allows us to continue our existence easily and safely. Covid for so many has become an opportunity for hobbies that we always promised to do if only we had enough time: bread-making, gardening and exercise. For some, it’s even an opportunity to get to know our children in deeper meaningful ways (that is sometimes good and at other times kind of annoying). These could be opportunities for colorful moments – but they are fleeting and fragile in the grey oppression of lockdown waiting for the promised exit of an unproven vaccine. Even with the opportunities of Covid, who can really positively answer the question, “How are you doing?”

So we feel sad, afraid and general sense of blah. This is the trap of skillagamink: that without the yellow of joy, black of fear, the blue of sadness, or the red of anger – we sink into the ambivalence and numbness of grey. Numbness is what to work against, because it leads to apathy and to a “What’s the point?” attitude that clouds our daily life and inhibits joy.

Pick up the palette of colors that has all been mixed up and turned into mud.

Wash the palette clean.

Pour some new vibrant colors. Remember to feel the colors; to feel alive.

Take a moment to recognize the vulnerability of our lives which Covid has made so clear, but actually was always there.

Vulnerability is the way in which we say to the virus, we will live fully colored lives in spite of it and not despite its impact. We can choose our reactions to the virus. We can challenge the miasma of skillagamink. We can bring our full range of feelings and express them creatively. We can use our feelings to change and make our proximate intimate world as well as the wider world better for us, our friends and our community.

To have color is to have imagination of what we can do. Yes, it is true that the canvas of our lives is contained within the smaller picture frames of lockdown and quarantine, but there is still a space upon which we can paint with vibrant hopeful hues.

Respond to the question this way: at least two positives colors for each negative one. Practice using colors in your thoughts and feelings. Don’t go grey.

Here are some of mine:

“I love speaking to my aunt via Facetime and that there is connection even though she lives in a different country on her own.”

“I have such gratitude for my children basically holding it together with the occasional understandable outburst.”

“I am angry at the incompetence of so many leaders in our democracies.”

“There is so much joy to be had in the small things of flowers on our balcony, and food on our tables.”

“Amazement at our friendship and our children’s friendship with our neighbors and local community. That we have found so much camaraderie on our doorstep. The we have found a place to belong.”

“Sadness at not being able to hug our beloved parents, family and friends from around the world.”

And what to say to the question, “How are you?” The answer is full of color and not skillagamink.